Scientific assessments needed by a global livestock sector facing increasingly hard trade-offs

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Paul Karaimu

New technologies and innovation systems need to take into account, and allow poor people to manage effectively, the many and increasingly hard tradeoffs resulting from increasing global demand for livestock products (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and elsewhere say increases in income and urbanization in developing countries are increasing demand for nutrient-rich foods, particularly food from livestock. This demand is projected to more than double meat and milk consumption in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia from the turn of the century to 2050.

In a presentation made at a Farm Animal Integrated Research Conference in Washington DC in March 2012, Nancy Johnson, an ILRI agricultural economist with expertise in assessing the impacts of agricultural interventions, warned that the growth opportunities for the world’s poor livestock keepers offered by this rising demand for livestock products also pose ‘threats that will require context-specific decisions’ for effectively managing the livestock sector. ‘Institutional and technological innovations will play critical roles in the sustainable growth of the sector and in successfully addressing some major challenges,’ said Johnson.

Among those challenges, Johnson named the following:

Better managing the risks from the many diseases livestock and livestock products transmit to people
Better managing livestock so that they help conserve rather than harm land, water, biodiversity resources, and global climate
Ensuring that livestock development empowers women
Helping pastoral herders and other livestock keepers transition to non-agricultural livelihoods
Stemming overconsumption of fatty red meat and other livestock foods in richer communities and countries, while increasing consumption among undernourished people.

Meeting these challenges, Johnson said, will require much more integrated cross-sectoral attention and work. More efficient livestock value chains and markets, for example, and greater access by the poor to those chains and markets, will be crucial in coming years to develop of smallholder livestock enterprises. But markets alone will not be sufficient to balance the tradeoffs. Smart policies support by efforts to raise knowledge and awareness will also be needed. Together, improvements in livestock livelihoods can provide pathways to better lives for hundreds of millions of livestock keepers now living in severe poverty and chronic hunger. With the appropriate interventions and support, the ILRI scientist said, we can also significantly improve the resilience of pastoral communities now living in the world’s great drylands and facing greater climate threats due to climate change.

What will be key to the success or failure of livestock development projects, Johnson said, is whether we can come up with innovations and technologies that take into account—and allow poor people to manage effectively—the many and increasingly hard tradeoffs faced by the poor but with consequences for society and the planet. Should farmers use their crop residues for mulch on their croplands or for feed for their farm animals? Should households intensify livestock production to earn more income, even though health risks may increase in the short term? Should communities deforest an area for cattle grazing or attempt to improve common degraded pastureland? Should landowners put fences to keep out wild animals or keep their lands unfenced to protect diminishing wildlife populations? Should countries formalize marketing systems to increase production and gain access to new markets at risk of marginalizing poor women producers and sellers?

These are hard choices, Johnson emphasizes, without quick and easy answers. We’re going to need new technologies, new innovation systems and new incentive structures, she says, to help developing countries and their many livestock keepers make the best decisions—decisions that wherever possible serve several ‘goods’, from poverty reduction to better nutrition to environmental protection. What that will demand, Johnson concludes, is the very best scientific knowledge available.

Download the presentation, ‘The production and consumption of livestock products in developing countries: Issues facing the world’s poor’, by Nancy Johnson, Jimmy Smith, Mario Herrero, Shirley Tarawali, Susan MacMillan and Delia Grace.

ILRI’s new strategy–with evidence we can raise the livestock game

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Peter Ballantyne

Last week, we interviewed International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) director general Jimmy Smith on his first eight months in office.

In the first video interview below, he comments on some emerging ‘big issues’ in ILRI’s new strategy. One is that we need to pay far more attention to the wider global debate on livestock; we also need a clear focus on ‘consumption’ and ‘consumers’, as well as climate change and livestock’s environmental footprint [more on ILRI’s ongoing strategy development process].

In the second video below, he comments on global perceptions that livestock are not good for the planet—and what this means for ILRI. He argues that ‘evidence’ is at the heart of ILRI’s contribution. We need better evidence of where livestock contributes positively and negatively, and we need to communicate this. [ILRI’s 2010 annual meeting was on the theme ‘livestock goods and bads.’ In April 2012, a global alliance on sustainable livestock was formed.].

The road back to Rio: Turning straw into gold — Crop ‘wastes’ at the heart of greener livestock development

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Susan MacMillan

Cow consumes the wastes of a crop harvest in West Bengal

A West Bengal cow consumes straw (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

Key findings were presented today on ways to enhance the value of coarse crop ‘wastes’—better termed ‘residues’—as feed for cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats and other ruminant farm animals. The talk was given at a ‘learning event’ that is part of Agriculture Day at the Rio-20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

Carlos Seré, former director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) now serving as chief strategist for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), delivered this presentation on behalf of Michael Blümmel, an animal nutritionist based in ILRI’s office in Hyderabad, India, who could not make the event as scheduled.

The gist of the presentation is that wheat and rice straw, maize stover, groundnut haulms and other residues of crops that remain after their grain or pods have been harvested for human consumption are major feed resources for livestock in developing countries. Widespread and increasing shortages of arable land and water in these countries are increasing the importance of these crop residues for livestock feed, and their importance will only increase over the coming decades as human population grows and as more and more people move out of poverty and begin adding more milk and meat to their diets.

In recent years, livestock and crop improvement researchers have worked together to improve the fodder value, in terms of both quantity and quality, of crop residues at their source. They’ve done this in crop improvement programs that incorporate fodder traits in crop selection, breeding and new cultivar release criteria. Key cereals and legumes are tackled and both conventional and molecular breeding techniques are employed. Fodder traders and feed processors have started employing additional interventions to further improve the superior crop straws and stover.

The following examples illustrate the many promising findings from this collaborative fodder research.

01 Nutritionally significant variations exist in crop residue fodder value among existing cultivars that can be exploited through simple phenotyping without detriment to primary crop traits such as grain and pod yields.
As a ballpark figure, 5 percentage units in digestibility can be exploited in crop residue fodder quality without detriment to gain or pod yield in all key cereal and leguminous crops. The advantage of daily milk yield accruing from 5% difference in digestibility of basal diet in well designed ration is about 5 kg per day due to a multiplicator effect from both higher energy concentration in the diet and higher intake.

02 Simple and network-sharable food/feed/fodder nutritional phenotyping techniques have been established, such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) platforms that support whole-plant crop improvement paradigms and programs.
ILRI NIRS platforms in India and Ethiopia are being used by other research programs (e.g., the new CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish) and research organizations (e.g., the International Center from Tropical Agriculture and the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas). Staff of national agricultural research institutions from the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have been trained in the NIRS technology and have access to network-shared NIRS equations. NIRS is increasingly being used to test for more qualitative grain traits such as lysine, tryptophan, iron, zinc and polyunsaturated fatty acids, with the aim of optimizing whole plants. This collaborative research is facilitating the analysis of 50 to 100 cultivars every day and gaining information about all their pertinent grain and crop residue traits.

03 Fodder value can be further increased through conventional crop breeding (such as recurrent selection) and molecular crop breeding (such as quantitative trait loci [QTL] identification and backcrossing).
Identification of stay-green QTLs and their backcrossing into elite sorghum varieties could increase stover digestibility by 3 to 5 percentage units while also increasing the sorghum plant’s drought resistance and water-use efficiencies.

04 In mixed crop-and-livestock agricultural production systems, the rates of adoption of new crop cultivars improved for both food and feed/fodder traits appear to be better than that for adoption of new cultivars improved for food traits only.
In a recent maize project in East Africa, farmers ranked stover traits 2.4 and grain yield 2.9 on a scale of 3. Farmers were most likely to adopt new maize cultivars that had improved stover as well as grain traits. Anecdotal evidence from groundnut adoption studies in India suggests that farmers prefer relatively small additive advantages—say 10% more pod + 10% more haulm + 10% more haulm quality—over (often theoretical) drastic increases in pod yield.

05 Participants in fodder value chains for straw and stover profit from superior straw and stover.
Price premiums for 3 to 5 percentage units in digestibility are in the range of 10 to 30%. There is higher demand for higher quality crop residues and superior sorghum stover is now regularly transported more than 400 km in parts of India. There are significant employment opportunities in harvesting, chopping, transporting and selling these crop residues.

06 Further improvement of superior straw and stover, in the form of supplementation, fortification or densification, can be done in feed processing, with productivity levels achieved from such processed but largely by-product-based feeds being four or more times greater than current levels of production.
Complete rations based on more than on 80% by-products (50–60% straws and stovers) can support 15–16 kg of milk daily in dairy buffaloes, about 1 kg live-weight gain in cattle and 120–130 g in sheep. Complete rations are suitable for smallholder farmers because the rations need not entail complex feed processing options; simply chopping and supplementing residues can suffice.

07 Increasing current yields of animals in India, such as by doubling the average daily yield of 3.6 kg of milk (across buffalo, crossbred and local cattle herds), would reduce levels of greenhouse gases dramatically, decreasing methane emission from dairy production by more than 1 million tons per year.
This is straightforward; increasing average daily milk yields in India from 3.6 to 6 to 7 kg per animal per day would reduce methane production from dairy animals relative to the same amount of milk produced by about 1 million tons per year.

In addition, there are good prospects for mainstreaming such multi-dimensional crop improvement outputs. For example, new CGIAR Research Programs (such as those on maize, rice, dryland cereals, and grain legumes) have already adopted the approach and have incorporated fodder value as high-priority traits in these crops.

Read more
Read more about the context for this livestock feeds learning event at Agriculture Day at Rio+20 on this ILRI News Blog:
The Road Back to Rio: ‘LivestockPLUS Learning Event’ shows how better feed reduces poverty AND livestock ‘hoofprints’, 18 Jun 2012.

Follow the presentations and discussions of this learning event on Twitter as @agricultureday and check updates via the Twitter-tags #RioPlus20 and #Rio4Ag and the Facebook page for ARDD. You can also follow CGIAR at Rio on this landing page on the CGIAR Consortium website.

Read more about ILRI’s crop residue research:
Dual-purpose groundnut, pigeonpea, millet and sorghum raise milk yields in dairy-intensive India, 8 Apr 2012.

Food-feed crops research: A synthesis, 17 Jan 2011.

The road back to Rio: ‘LivestockPLUS Learning Event’ shows how better feed reduces poverty AND livestock ‘hoofprints’

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Susan MacMillan

Cattle graze on Colombia's eastern plains, or Llanos (photo on Flickr by CIAT/Neil Palmer).

Several hundred people in Rio de Janeiro today will be discussing and debating a topic not often included in high-profile meetings. The topic is how we can use improved livestock feed to reduce both poverty and climate change.

The discussions today will take place at one of 13 ‘learning events’ that are part of an Agriculture and Rural Development Day at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Staff from CGIAR Centres are helping to organize and are participating in events throughout this day.

Given that the key messages of this particular learning event run counter to much current thinking about livestock, the participants will share and discuss scientific evidence that demonstrates the benefits of improved feeding practices, particularly their potential for contributing significantly to climate change mitigation while improving livestock production.

Messages
On the table today are both fodders, coarse foods composed of entire plants or the leaves and stalks of cereal crops, and bulky grass or hay forages. The learning event, titled ‘LivestockPlus—How can sustainable intensification of livestock production through improved feeding practices help realize both livelihood as well as environmental benefits?’, will deliver the following three fundamental messages.

New feeding practices can increase livestock production while decreasing its ecological ‘hoofprint’

New livestock feeding practices, like the use of improved dual-purpose crops and high-quality forages, offer significant potential for sustainable intensification of agricultural production to enhance livelihoods while also reducing livestock’s ecological ‘hoofprint’.

Improved forages, like forests, will capture carbon

Improved tropical forages offer the further advantage of sequestering large amounts of carbon—on a scale similar to that of forests—with the possibility of reducing emissions of nitrous oxide and methane per unit of livestock product. There is evidence that the potential of sown forages to sequester carbon (assuming good pasture and livestock management) is second only to that of forests and that sown forages could realize 60–80% of agriculture’s total potential to mitigate climate change.

Better feeding practices will allow mixed crop-livestock farmers to produce more food more sustainably

If widely applied by the vast army of ‘mixed’ smallholder farmers, who raise livestock as well as grow crops, and who are the mainstay of global food security, improved livestock feeding practices could deliver huge increases in food production at reduced environmental cost against a background of rising livestock production and consumption in the developing world.

Evidence
The result of numerous global initiatives and extensive testing, this work offers practical examples of how improved feeds can raise the production and incomes of smallholder farmers. Superior forage grasses widely adopted in Latin America, for example, already generate up to USD4 billion in Brazil alone. And improved tropical forages have also been adopted widely in Southeast Asia since the start of their promotion in 1995. A recent review indicates that continued adoption of improved feeds, including sown forages, could significantly reduce greenhouse gases on a global scale, while enhancing the livelihoods of the one billion people dependent on livestock-cropping systems.

What remains to be done
To scale up these improved feed resources so that they contribute to a transformed food system, we need more precsie understanding of the impacts of livestock on climate change, with the impacts differentiated by specific livestock-cropping systems, as well as of the potential for improved feeding practices to mitigate climate change. To make livestock and crop production in the tropics more climate friendly through improved feeding practices, smallholders must be given stronger incentives to market their livestock products and to sequester carbon through improved land management. Smallholders might be encouraged to adopt sown (and carbon-storing) forages, for example, through schemes instituted to pay them for the environmental services they provide.

What could be achieved
With donor support for research to obtain conclusive data and to provide policymakers with support for their decision-making, a functional system for implementing the LivestockPlus concept and associated strategies could be available within the next 5–6 years.

The program for this learning event
The program for this learning event includes a keynote presentation on the role of forages and livestock production in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions by CIAT soil scientist and agroecologist Aracely Castro; this keynote will be followed by three short case-study introductions on the following topics.

Carbon sequestration in livestock production for climate change mitigation: Implications for policy development in Brazil, presented by Embrapa beef cattle researcher Davi José Bungenstab.

Livestock production and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia: Technical innovation for environmental and livelihood benefits, presented by Carlos Seré, former director general of ILRI and now chief strategist for IFAD (note: Seré is speaking on behalf of ILRI animal nutritionist Michael Blümmel).

Climate-smart silvopastoral systems for a green livestock economy, presented by CATIE director Muhammad Ibrahim.

These case study presentations will be followed by parallel group discussions on each of the three cases to answer such questions as:
What are the main research findings that support the technological or policy innovation, including evidence of livelihood and environmental benefits?
What were key lessons learned from the research leading to this innovation?
What are the requirements for scaling it up?

The session will close with a moderated panel discussion in plenary with the keynote speaker and case study presenters.

Institutions involved
CATIE is a regional centre of excellence based in Costa Rica that works on solutions for the environment and development in rural communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.

CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, based in Colombia, works to increase the eco-efficiency of agriculture to reduce hunger and poverty and to improve human health in the tropics.

EMBRAPA is the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, which works for the sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness.

ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Africa, works to reduce hunger, poverty, ill health and environmental degradation through enhanced livestock systems for poor people in the developing world.

Presenters at the event
This learning event will be chaired by Elcio Guimarães, who is director of research for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Discussions at the session will be summarized by Nathan Russell, a key organizer of this session who leads corporate communications work at CIAT. One of the three scheduled case study speakers, Michael Blümmel of ILRI, is unable to attend; his presentation will be made by Carlos Seré, former director general of ILRI and now chief strategist for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Follow the event on the web
Today, 18 Jun 2012, proceedings of the Agriculture and Rural Development Day will be webcast live (the event takes place from 11.30–13.00 Rio time), and you can ask questions and interact with the organizers via Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the presentations and discussions of this learning event on Twitter as @agricultureday and check updates via the Twitter-tags #RioPlus20 and #Rio4Ag and the Facebook page for ARDD. You can also follow CGIAR at Rio on this landing page on the CGIAR Consortium website.

Making Asian agriculture smarter

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Susan MacMillan

A cow feeds on improved CIAT forage grasses, in Kampong Cham, Cambodia (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

Last week, coming on the heels of a Planet Under Pressure conference in London, which set out to better define our ‘planetary boundaries’ and to offer scientific inputs to the Rio+20 United Nations sustainable development conference this June, a group of leaders in Asia—comprising agriculture and meteorology chiefs, climate negotiators and specialists, and heads of development agencies—met to hammer out a consensus on ways to make Asian agriculture smarter.

The workshop, Climate-smart agriculture in Asia: Research and development priorities, was held 11–12 April 2012 in Bangkok. It was organized by the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutes; the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security; and the World Meteorological Organization.

This group set itself three ambitious tasks: To determine the best options (1) for producing food that will generate lower levels of greenhouse gases, which cause global warming; (2) for producing much greater amounts of food, which are needed to feed the region’s rapidly growing and urbanizing population; and (3) for doing all this under a changing climate that, if farming and farm policies don’t change, is expected to reduce agricultural productivity in the region by anywhere from 10 to 50 per cent over the next three decades.

The workshop participants started by reviewing the best practices and technologies now available for making agriculture ‘climate smart’. They then reviewed current understanding of how climate change is likely to impact Asian agriculture. They then agreed on what are the gaps in the solutions now available and which kinds of research and development should be given highest priority to fill those gaps. Finally, they developed a plan for filling the gaps and linking scientific knowledge with policy actions at all levels.

On the second of this two-day workshop, the participants were asked to short-list no more than ten key areas as being of highest priority for Asia’s research and development communities.

This exercise tempted this blogger to suggest ten suitable areas in the livestock sector.

(1) Lower greenhouse gas emissions from livestock through adoption of improved feed supplements (crops residues) that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Contact ILRI animal nutritionist Michael Blümmel, based in Hydrabad, for more information: m.blummel at cgiar.org

(2) Safeguard public health by enhancing Asia’s capacity to detect and control outbreaks of infectious diseases transmitted between animals and people.
Contact ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Gilbert, based in Vientienne, for more information: j.gilbert at cgiar.org

(3) Improve the efficiency of water used for livestock and forage production.
Contact ILRI rangeland ecologist Don Peden, based in Vancouver, for more information: d.peden at cgiar.org

(4) Pay livestock keepers for their provision of environmental services.
Contact ILRI ecologist Jan de Leeuw, based in Nairobi, for more information: j.leeuw at cgiar.org

(5) Recommend levels of consumption of meat, milk and eggs appropriate for the health of people, their livelihoods and environments in different regions and communities.
Contact ILRI partner Tara Garnett, who runs the Food Climate Research Network based in Guildford, for more information: t.garnett at surrey.ac.uk

(6) Design institutional and market mechanisms that support the poorer livestock keepers, women in particular.
Contact ILRI agricultural economist Steve Staal, based in Nairobi, for more information: s.staal at cgiar.org

(7) Educate publics in the West on the markedly different roles that livestock play in different regions of the world.
Contact ILRI systems analyst Philip Thornton, based in Edinburgh, for more information: p.thornton at cgiar.org

(8) Adopt risk- rather than rule-based approaches to ensuring the safety of livestock foods.
Contact ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace, based in Nairobi, for more information: d.grace at cgiar.org

(9) Focus attention on small-scale, relatively extensive, mixed crop-and-livestock production systems.
Contact ILRI systems analyst Mario Herrero, based in Nairobi, for more information: m.herrero at cgiar.org

(10) Give livestock-keeping communities relevant and timely climate and other information via mobile technologies.
Contact ILRI knowledge manager Pier-Paolo Ficarelli, based in Delhi, for more information: p.ficarelli at cgiar.org

Do you have a ‘top-ten’ list of what could make Asian agriculture ‘smart agriculture’? Post it in the Comment box, please!

Go here for ILRI blogs about the Planet Under Pressure conference.

ILRI in Asia blog

New reports explore reliability of climate models at predicting impacts on agriculture

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Paul Karaimu

A farmer washing newly-harvested potatoes in Malawi. New studies in Africa and Asia offer insights into the reliablity of climate projections for agriculture (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Findings from a series of studies that assessed the reliability of climate models in predicting the impact of climate change on agriculture were released today.

The reports, which are based on studies that tested General Circulation Models in West Africa, East Africa and the Indo-Gangetic plains were produced by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and Oxford University. The studies reviewed impacts of different climate change scenarios on crop farming in these regions.

The reports show that though individual models have a number of severe weaknesses in predicting agricultural impacts of climate change, they can be used together to produce useful climate change projections. The reports give details on the specific strengths and weaknesses of each of the models used and how they can be used together to predict possible shifts in farming practices.

‘Ensemble model predictions can overcome many of the individual model weaknesses to help decision makers plan future agricultural activities,’ said Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who coordinated the research for the CGIAR Climate Change program. ‘This information can guide investments in risk management, adaptation and mitigation research, as well as infrastructural development. These actions are crucial if agriculture is to adapt to a changing climate.’

Read full story on the CCAFS news blog: http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog

More on getting credible figures for livestock emissions of greenhouse gases

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), is identifying policy changes and actions needed to help the world achieve food security in the face of climate change; the Commission launched this summary for policymakers on 16 Nov 2011 (photo on cover by Neil Palmer/CIAT).

The current issue of New Scientist publishes an article describing a recently released study, ‘Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change’, which was commissioned by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research). For more on that study, see the CCAFS news release of 16 November 2011: ‘Global Commission Charts Pathway for Achieving Food Security in Face of Climate Change‘.

Sujata Gupta’s New Scientist article on meat consumption, ‘Just how much meat can eco-citizens eat?’ (online publication date: 16 November 2011; print issue date: 19 November 2011; print issue number: 2839), contains what we believe is a factual error. Gupta quotes a 2007 article in the Lancet (‘Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health’, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61256-2) that 80% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions come from meat production.

More credible figures, compiled from international global assessments by agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero and his colleagues at the International Livestock Research Institute, are the following.

The total agricultural sector emits around 25–32% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Crops emit 14% (EPA 2006) and all livestock emit 11–18%, depending on how emissions are attributed (FAO 2006, EPA 2006, PBL 2010). The emissions from livestock can be divided roughly as 30% methane from enteric fermentation, 30% nitrous oxide from manure management and 40% from carbon dioxide from land-use changes for grazing and feed production (FAO 2006). Figures for the emissions from land-use changes carry a lot of uncertainty. Emissions can also be divided by species and product. For example, the dairy sector is responsible for roughly 27% of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock (FAO 2010) while monogastric production (pigs/poultry) is responsible for 10–20% of the livestock emissions. Hence, it is not possible that beef production can account for 80% of all agricultural emissions. Even if beef cattle represent 50–60% of livestock emissions, this translates roughly into a figure close to 30–35% of all agricultural emissions—certainly not 80%. What is true is that of all livestock products, beef is the most inefficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions produced per unit of product, especially compared to dairy and monogastrics (De Vries and de Boer 2010).

Herrero and his colleagues at ILRI, CCAFS and elsewhere are publishing updates on topics concerning livestock production and climate and other kinds of global change. Look out, for example, for the following book chapter, due next month, which we will report on in this blog: M Herrero, PK Thornton, P Havlík, and M Rufino, Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: Mitigation options and trade-offs. In: E Wollenberg, A Nihart, ML Tapio-Bistrom and C Seeberg-Elverfeldt (eds), Climate Change Mitigation and Agriculture, Earthscan, London, UK (in press).

See an earlier report on a similar topic in this ILRI News Blog: Livestock and climate change: Towards credible figures, 27 Jun 2011.

CGIAR media briefing on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: A strengthened and joined-up approach is needed

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Paul Karaimu

A journalist at the CGIAR Media Briefing held on 1 September 2011 at ILRI: Experts have called for a strengthened and joined-up approach of addressing food crises in the Horn of Africa (photo credit: ILRI/Meredith Braden).

A panel of experts on the Horn of Africa has called for greater investment in agricultural development, greater support for agricultural research, and greater cooperation between research, government, private sector and development actors. These can speed the adoption of innovations by farmers and herders, helping millions of food producers in the Horn of Africa now facing the severest drought in this region in six decades.

Speaking today at a news briefing organized by the CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres, with the briefing hosted and backstopped by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, the experts called for a ‘matching of investments in infrastructure development with investments in knowledge’ to get more research into use.

The experts were interviewed by more than 20 journalists on the subject of ‘Famine in the Horn of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities for Mitigating Drought-Induced Food Crises’. The experts were leaders of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the CGIAR, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Program.

‘It is not drought but vulnerability to drought that is eroding livelihoods in these areas,’ said Jeff Hill, Director of Policy, Bureau for Food Aid, at USAID. ‘And this vulnerability is largely a result of decades of under-investment in agriculture and sustainable food security in the region.’ This is despite the fact that livestock production in the arid and semi-arid lands in the Horn of Africa contributes 35–45 and 45–50 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) in Ethiopia and Kenya, respectively. ‘However,’ Hill said, ‘the current national development plans in Ethiopia and Kenya recognize the value of these regions and should be supported by all because they are offering a chance to build a coalition of support to sustainably address and tackle the challenges experienced in the arid and semi-arid lands.’

Mark Gordon, from the World Food Programme, co-chair of Somalia Interagency Food Cluster, reported that ‘Below-normal rainfall in recent seasons has dried up water points used for animals and crops, increased the prices of food and fuel, tightened global food supply chains, and led to more political- and resource-based conflicts.’

The solutions to the current problem ‘have been discussed for decades,’ noted the expert panel. It reminded the journalists that the current drought is not a ‘one-off event.’ The current problem offers an opportunity to ‘scale up the use of tested knowledge, and make research a key investment area,’ said Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. He added that ‘We have to adapt agriculture to the changing nature of our environment, change our market structures to accommodate and promote drought-tolerant crops and we should consider adjusting our food habits to make better use of crops that are adapted to the region.’

The panel proposed the creation of commodity exchanges for food crops to help reduce speculation on food prices and widening insurance protection for livestock keepers to help them rebuild their livelihoods after drought. Other ways of helping to avert future food crises mentioned include the application of community-based emergency recovery and resilience-building interventions, such as sustainable land management programs, construction of soil banks and underground reservoirs. ‘There is need to use proven, tested and appropriate technologies to work with vulnerable households for “the next time, the next shock” happens,’ said Gordon.

‘The current drought is a warning shot, an early indication of the immense challenges that we face in the future, not only in [the Horn of Africa] but around the world,’ said Lloyd Le Page, CEO of the CGIAR Consortium. ‘Despite the challenges to livestock herding and crop farming in this region, we can prevent [food crises] from happening,’ said Le Page, ‘if we are willing to embrace research and policies that give farmers in the region the tools they need to be resilient in the face of increasing uncertainty.’

—

Find out more about the media briefing on the CGIAR Consortium website: http://consortium.cgiar.org/hoa/

CGIAR briefing on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: 1 September at ILRI Nairobi

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

‘Maasai herding’, painting by Kahare Miano (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth).

A CGIAR news briefing will be held on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa on 1 September 2011 at the campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). This event will be broadcasted live on our Horn of Africa page.

Research Options for Mitigating Drought-induced Food Crises

WHEN: 10:30 a.m.—noon, Thur, 1 September 2011 (09:30–11:00 CET—07:30–09:00 GMT)

WHERE: ILRI Campus, Naivasha Road, Nairobi

INVITATIONS: The briefing is open to the press and the public, but RSVP is needed to get access to the ILRI compound (see below).

The current famine engulfing the Horn of Africa and threatening the lives of nearly 13 million people continues to dominate discussions about development worldwide. As relief efforts continue, experts and stakeholders from the region will gather in Nairobi to discuss longer-term evidence-based solutions and interventions needed to avert the profound effects of predicted extreme weather events in the future.

Although droughts can result in failed harvests, they do not have to result in famine. Famine mainly has to do with inappropriate policies, conflicts and neglect, which reduce people’s access to food, grazing for livestock, and water for both. We must support agencies delivering emergency aid today.

And we must do more.

Almost everyone living in the drought-afflicted areas of the Horn produces food from these drylands. Research into dryland agricultural and natural resources thus plays a critical role in uncovering the causes of food shortages and identifying ways of reducing these. Linking smallholder farmers and herders with research knowledge, products and innovations—from better uses of land, water and other natural resources, to better grazing and pasture management, to weather-based insurance that protects against drought and other shocks, to drought-tolerant crops—could greatly enhance the resilience of vulnerable dryland communities to future droughts.

Experts within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) will meet in Nairobi on 1 September with a few selected development partners to discuss how CGIAR research can be used to find long-term solutions to improving and sustaining agricultural livelihoods in the drylands.

Panel

Lloyd Le Page, CEO of the CGIAR Consortium

Mark Gordon, Co-Chair, UN Somalia Food Cluster, World Food Programme

Namanga Ngongi, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Joseph Mureithi, Deputy Director, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) [TBC]

Topics to be addressed include:

Promising options and innovations to help farmers become more resilient and food-secure in the face of weather and other shocks

The role of infrastructure and access to viable, functioning markets in food security and prices

Whether drought-tolerant crops and large-scale irrigation are the answer

Whether pastoralism is a driver of drought-induced food insecurity or a buffer against it

Policies that are needed, and at what levels, to ensure that recommendations and innovations for drought-prone areas are put in place in those areas that need them most

For more information on the topic, and live video/Twitter link during the briefing, check our Horn of Africa page. Follow @CGIARconsortium on Twitter (Follow Twitter tag: #Ag4HoA)

The briefing is open to the press and to the public.

For more information and to RSVP, contact:

Jeff Haskins at +254 729 871 422 – jhaskins(at)burnesscommunications(dot)com

Meredith Braden at +254 713 234 806 – mbraden(at)burnesscommunications(dot)com

(RSVP is needed to get access to the compound)

Predicted impacts of climate change on Kenya: Definitely hotter–expect less productive cropping, more livestock herding

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Why climate change matters in Kenya: This figure shows the close relationship between drought events and GDP growth in Kenya over two decades (figure by IFPRI 2006).

As a prolonged drought bites harder in northern Kenya and other regions of the Horn of Africa, it may be useful to review a report on a ‘Kenya Smallholder Climate Change Adaptation’ project, published in October 2010, which gives an overview of Kenya’s climate variability and change and the impacts of both on the country’s agriculture.

The project was conducted by scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute and funded by the World Bank and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

ILRI agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero is the lead author of a note on the project, some of the main findings of which are summarized below.

With agriculture accounting for about 26 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of its jobs, the Kenyan economy is highly sensitive to variations in rainfall.
Arid and semi-arid areas, which comprise 80 per cent of Kenya’s total land area, are prone to floods despite their low levels of rainfall (between 300 and 500 millimeters annually).
Kenya experiences major droughts every decade and minor ones every three to four years.
The negative effects of these droughts are spreading among the increasingly dense population and fragile arid and semi-arid lands.
Intensification and transition to mixed agro-pastoralist systems are increasingly marginalizing Kenya’s nomadic and pastoralist systems.
Rainfed agriculture is, and will remain, the dominant source of staple food production and the livelihood foundation of most of the rural poor in Kenya.
We need to better understand and cope with Kenya’s existing climate variability.
We need to plan for future climate variability on this continent: Climate model simulations under a range of possible greenhouse gas emission scenarios suggest that the median temperature increase for Africa is 3–4°C by the end of the 21st century, which is roughly 1.5 times the global mean response.

Rising monthly means of temperatures in Kenya from 1907 to 1998 in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem (graphic by ILRI’s Joseph Ogutu, 2001).

Predictions about future levels of precipitation in Kenya are complicated both because precipitation in the country is highly variable across space and time and because we have few data available for analysis, but some total annual precipitation projections for Kenya suggest increases by about 0.2 to 0.4 per cent per year.
Although the projected increases in rainfall might appear to be good news for Kenya’s arid and semi-arid districts, increased evapo-transpiration due to rising temperatures means few if any increases in the length of growing periods and rangeland or crop productivity.
Extreme rainfall events are likely to become more intense over much of northern East Africa.
An increase in climate variability in Kenya, leading to more than one drought every five years, is likely to cause significant and irreversible decreases in livestock numbers in the country’s arid and semi-arid lands, with severe impacts on pastoralists whose food security and livelihood depend solely on livestock.
Climate change will likely lead to increased food imports by Kenya, which will dampen demand for food, as the affordability of nearly all agricultural commodities—including basic staples and livestock products—declines, leading to increases in malnutrition, especially of young children in the country’s highly vulnerable arid and semi-arid lands.
As a result of climate change, Kenya could see significant areas where cropping is no longer possible and the role of livestock as a livelihood option increases.

Read the whole note: Climate Variability and Climate Change: Impacts on Kenyan Agriculture, Note on a Kenya Smallholder Climate Adaptation Project, by Mario Herrero, Claudia Ringler, Jeannette van de Steeg, Philip Thornton, Tingju Zhu, Elizabeth Bryan, Abisalom Omolo, Jawoo Koo and An Notenbaert, October 2010.

Update: ‘Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity’

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Map 4.4 Five percent reduction in crop season, sensitivity to change, capacity to cope (corrected) (map credit: CCAFS-ILRI/Notenbaert).

Last month the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) launched a report showing global hotspots to climate induced food-insecurity, garnering significant media attention. Several weeks later, the authors, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), noticed two errors in the calculations, and so CCAFS immediately took the report offline for corrections. CCAFS issued an erratum that outlines the errors in the first version as well as in the press release. The errors are related to calcluation of population numbers, in one case the number of people at risk is underestimated, while in the other case the number of people most at risk is overestimated.

The press release stated that “there are 56 million food-insecure and crop-dependent people in parts of West Africa, India and China who live in areas where, by the mid-2050s, maximum daily temperatures during the growing season could exceed 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).” The accurate number is 170.5 million. Why did this happen? The researchers miscalculated the population numbers (in this case the number of people affected) by a factor of about three. Therefore, the population number in the maps 4.4 through 4.12 are underestimated as well. Map 4.4 (above) was further modified to correct High and Low exposure categories (which had been reversed) What is the significance of this? The new numbers tell us basically the same story as our previous calculations, only that more, not fewer, people are likely to be affected by hunger and more extreme climates.
The press release stated that “there are 369 million food-insecure people living in agriculture-intensive areas that are highly exposed to a potential five percent decrease in the length of the growing period.” The accurate number is 265.7 million. However, the number in the two highest categories of vulnerability (HHL and HHH), goes up from around 607 million in the previous calculations to nearly 1 billion (999.8 million) in the current calculations.Why did this happen? The researchers mistakenly transposed the “high” and “low” exposure categories in the 5% map (4.4), which actually results in a lower number of people being most at risk than was stated in the press release.What is the significance of this? Our revised map shows the same basic message as our previous map, that large portions of India, West Africa, and China are predicted to be hotspots of both climate change and food insecurity.

Erratum: The corrected figures are now available for download (PDF).

Corrections to Press Release: Download the corrected press release in multiple languages at the CCAFS Press Room.

The final revised report is now available.

La Nina, not climate change, probable cause of East Africa’s drought–ILRI livestock scientists

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

One of thousands of dead cattle in the southern Somali Region of Ethiopia five years ago, in an earlier drought in the same region of the Horn of Africa (photo on Flickr by Andrew Heavens).

Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, are saying that the current drought cycle in East Africa’s Horn, which has already led to famine in southern Somalia, cannot be ascribed to climate change, although there is evidence that La Niña is a probable cause.

Interviews by IRIN of ILRI scientists Phil Thornton, a systems analyst specializing in climate change in developing countries, and Jan de Leeuw, an environmental scientist leading ILRI’s rangelands research, were published in the Guardian‘s Development Network Blog.

‘. . . Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.

‘He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate change impact in east Africa were “a problem” as the authoritative inter-governmental panel on climate change’s (the IPCC) fourth assessment report “indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.

‘”But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that . . . certain Indian Ocean effects in east Africa may not actually occur.

‘”Some people think that east Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time.”

‘The IPCC’s fifth assessment report will be released in 2014.

‘Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI’s people, livestock and environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that “we don’t understand”.

‘What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. “The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from east Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of east Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia,” according to the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

‘De Leeuw writes: “La Niña events were common from 1950 till 1976. Since then we had two decades [until about 1996] with fewer events of lesser depth. This has changed since then and over the last 15 years or so we have had more frequent La Niña events.”

‘Events as deep as the current La Niña occur once in 20 or 30 years, writes De Leeuw. “We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also.”

‘Thornton has the last word when he says research attention must focus on developing effective early warning systems and ways to help people affected by these events, who have no use for “academic” consideration of the linkages with climate change to cope better with the current levels of weather variability, “whatever happens in the future”.’

Read the whole article by IRIN on the Guardian‘s Development Network Blog: La Niña blamed for east African drought: Environmentalists call for the development of early warning systems to help countries prepare for adverse weather, 14 Jul 2011.

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